[Jeff Higgins]

The New Haven plant has actually not been owned by Winchester, or the new foreign conglomerate that owns the "Winchester" name, for decades. U.S. Repeating Arms bought the plant and has been supplying '94's and '70's under license. Other Winchester products have been coming from overseas for quite some time. In light of that, I'm not sure this will mean the end of prodution for the New Haven produced models. Both remain strong sellers in the rifle market. They will probably continue to be produced overseas, maybe after a short lag in production.

Fastpat, I'm not sure that rifle and handgun sales are all that closely related. I think the phenomena we are seeing relates to the urbanization of America more than anything else. Fewer people are hunting; expressed as a percentage of population, numbers are lower than ever in our history. No one buys '94's and '70's primarily for self defense, although a pistol caliber '94 is great to have in the closet. Urbanites that are allowed by law to carry buy handguns. Increasing urban popultions + increasing concealed carry states = increase in handgun sales. I'm not sure that folks buying these handguns would be buying rifles in their stead if they could not have their handguns.

Winchester, as far as I know, was never targeted by the lawsuits. The lawsuits filed against the firearms industry focused on the handgun manufacturers. Winchester has never manufactured any dreaded "assault rifles" either (although a good man with a '94 would put anyone with an AR15 to shame, but that's another story...), so I don't believe they were targeted there.

I think it really boils down to poor management and a reluctance to invest in their facilities. While U.S. Repeating Arms did much to modernize the old plant and improve manufacturing efficeincy, it probably was not enough. Colt went through the same thing and actually went bankrupt and changed hands a couple of times. Time will tell with Winchester; hopefully the parent company establishes manufacturing of these models elswhere, or another investor moves in at New Haven.